Apps: Utilities

For those of you who like to 'stick it to the man' by jailbreaking your iOS devices, you'll be pleased to know that the good folks at the Chronic Dev Team have released a shiny new tool for all your jailbreaking needs. Better yet, it's an untethered jailbreak, meaning that it should 'just work' without requiring any special boot-time tricks. The application can jailbreak any device at iOS 4.2.1 without trouble. If you're interested, throw on your tye-dye shirt, blast your Pearl Jam, and head over to the GreenPois0n website to mash 'GO' on that download button.

I’ve had wonderful memories when as a kid, I spent several blissful years with my IBM PC XT clone experimenting with Dos programming and played cutting edge games like Ultima IV , Wizardry, Autoduel and Star Control. The iDOS emulator ported by Fast Intelligence was able to deliver an unmatched wave of nostalgia and within a day of installing iDOS on my Ipad, I was trying out some of these classics again – mostly just to see them again in all their glory - 256 VGA colour and adlib sound.

When the iPhone was introduced in June 2007, AT&T's 2-year contract required a data plan—there was no cell-only option. But the pricing of $30 a month for unlimited data was groundbreaking. The carrier killed the unlimited option exactly three years later. Existing agreements are honored as long as you don't let them lapse, but all new users have to choose between a 200MB/month ($15/month) or 2GB/month data plan ($25/month). Going over your data limit is not cheap: $15 for an additional 200MB or $10 for 1GB, depending on your plan.

To paraphrase Carl Sagan's famous remark, there are billions upon billions of stars and other sparkly things out there in the night skies. Gazing into the heavens on a clear night can be a mystical experience, but the real magic occurs when you understand what you're looking at.

Astronomy began thousands of years ago when shepherds in the field gazed up at the sky and saw the outlines of objects and mythical beings traced by patterns of stars. As time passed and technology evolved, our knowledge of the sky improved. But to this day, we still cling to the same 88 constellations envisioned by those ancient shepherds on long ago sleepless nights.

The range of creative and practical apps that use the camera in unusual ways is astonishing. Who would have thought that you could use it as a heart rate monitor or a business card reader? There's even an app for those who are colorblind, to show them the colors present in any object you photograph.

Apple made a brilliant decision when it let developers create apps that access the camera input and use it in non-traditional ways. In this month's column, I offer a roundup of some of these apps.

You need to calibrate this so that it's accurate, so I haven't taken the time to try it. But they claim that you can actually use your iPhone as a thermometer. You can see a video of the process of calibrating the Thermos app ($1.99), and then see it actually measure the temperature, on YouTube.

When the iPhone was introduced in June 2007, AT&T’s 2-year contract required a data plan—there was no cell-only option. But the pricing of $30 a month for unlimited data was groundbreaking. The carrier killed the unlimited option exactly three years later. Existing agreements are honored as long as you don’t let them lapse, but all new users have to choose between a 200MB/month ($15/month) or 2GB/month data plan ($25/month). Going over your data limit is not cheap: $15 for an additional 200MB or $10 for 1GB, depending on your plan.

Now that we're closing in on the holiday season, you absolutely must have a bar code scanner. These apps are tremendously popular, and for good reason. You're in a store, you find something you like, you scan the bar code with your iPhone's camera, and then you find out where you can buy it for the lowest price. Typically these apps are location aware, in case you want to buy it at a nearby store. And typically, they also have maps and directions that show you how to get to the store with the lowest price. And — they're free! Why would anyone go without one of these?

Engadget has recently reported that there is an iPhone DST Bug causing alarm clocks to go off an hour later than they are supposed to; even though their clocks have switched over to Standard Time. The blog post also reports that this same problem occurred in Australia when their Daylight Savings Time ended. So if the problem isn't fixed then we are next.

NCH Software, a leading provider of audio and telephony tools, has just released Pocket WavePad for the iPhone. (There's not yet an iPad-specific version.) It lets you record audio and edit the recordings, apply audio effects, reduce background noise, and easily email or upload the audio files that you've recorded.